BIOM2011/2013 Cardiac Function Practicals 

BIOM2011/2013 Cardiac Function Practicals 

Guideline for Scientific Report (covers R1 & R2)

Addressing the G.A.P. in this task

Task Overview:

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The practicals are designed to help you develop, conduct and communicate about a research question of interest to you, and expand your understanding of scientific thinking, evidence-based reasoning and effective communication. The classes and assessment have been designed to guide you through all aspects, with the ultimate outcome being the formal scientific report you write (and hopefully, many other new or refined skills that will be relevant for later studies and professional growth). 

About half-way through the semester, you will put together the first half of the full report –

Report 1, the Partial report. This will include the Introduction, Hypothesis, some of the Methods and References. The Methods section of Report 1 is not expected to cover details relevant to Data Analysis as you won’t know these details in full until later in the semester. This report has a hard limit of no more than 750 words. The References List at the end does not count toward the word limit. See below for more on word limits.

Toward the end of the semester, you will then construct the full, formal scientific report – Report 2. This full report will follow the formal IMRaD format of a scientific primary paper, including Introduction, Methods (including Data Analysis), Results, Discussion and References. You will have feedback from the first report, allowing you to refine and improve those parts of Report 2. This final report has a word limit of 1500 words +/-10%. See below for more on word limits.

Ultimately, your work will be presenting the quantitative outcomes of your experiment examining the electrical and mechanical activity of the heart in an amphibious animal model (the cane toad, Bufo marinus). Throughout both submissions therefore, you should carefully integrate evidence from relevant scientific research to establish the rationale for your study, then interpret your findings and the cellular mechanisms of physiology involved. Whilst it is fine to draw on mammalian literature, relying overly or solely on the mammalian field is not going to be directly applicable to your study context which examined cardiac function in an amphibious model. 

Both reports must be wholly individual work; apart from the figures produced, all content of the report must be written in your own words, expressing your ideas.

The rest of the pages in this report guide describe the key features, purpose and structure of each section of a formal scientific report (from Introduction through to Discussion) as well as the References and Writing. This provides some general advice for your understanding of how to approach these sections. Your best guide for conventions and expectations in this genre of communication and thinking will come from the journal articles you read (look for patterns). Additionally, you have been introduced to an excellent science communication resource during the 1st Meta-Learning task (CLiPS), and of course, have your tutor to discuss your ideas with and clarify your understanding of scientific (and course) expectations. Guidance on each section below also reflects the wording and standards within the task Criteria Rubric (available in Assessment section of course Blackboard site) to help you further understand what each criterion is looking for.

Note that there are always variations within conventional frameworks, and specific standards outlined for any task you complete (within or outside of study). Take note therefore, of the explicit advice for/against certain features expected in this task, as outlined below. The Criteria Rubric for this task is a further source of information about how to approach your report; talk to us about your understanding of standards and expectations whether you don’t, OR DO, understand something… dialogue about what you think you understand of the task is just as important as about what you don’t understand!

Text Format:

For both reports – Typed; reasonable and professional font (10-12point font, Times New Roman/Arial/Calibri, 1.5 line or double spaced). Pay attention to spacing and alignment; you should be aiming for a professional standard in any work you produce.

Word Limits:

Report 1 – No more than 750 words. This is a hard limit (i.e. there is no +5% or 10%). This count does not include the list of references at the end. Note that this doesn’t mean you have to go up to 750 words! See the report guide section on writing for more about conciseness and informative writing.

Report 2 – Maximum 1500 words +/- 10%. This count does not include the list of references at the end but DOES INCLUDE in-text citations and figure legends (as per standard convention for this genre of writing). Take notice of the structure and relative length of key sections in scientific articles – use these to model your own writing when considering internal flow, cohesion and how much to write in each section. You will also have feedback from Report 1 and so may need to edit, refine, re-structure the sections in that task to help present a more focused and concise piece of work.

For both reports, the word count must be included on the assignment coversheet.

INTRODUCTION & HYPOTHESIS:

Introduction

In general, the purpose of the Introduction section is to make a cohesive argument (justification) for the significance of your ‘study’. It should be well written and concise, providing a good overall outline of the research area but which is directly relevant to your study’s focus.

Typically, the introduction for this style of report starts with a brief opening about the broader field of research, then moves toward a more specific description of current knowledge and discrepancies/gaps in our understanding of key mechanisms and the area of research (i.e. what do we know and not know?). By the end of the section, the scope and purpose of your investigation should be logical and clear, based on the previous information presented (i.e. how your study fits in with the body of research and/or what gap you are filling). Think about the internal structure and flow of ideas presented, and how these contribute meaningfully toward the ultimate point of why you are doing your study.

A common problem found in the Introduction section is the inclusion of information that is too general, too basic (“textbook”) and not relevant… notice the wording of the 60% criterion standard reflects this. For example, you should avoid a lengthy discussion on the basic mechanisms of adrenergic receptors, like you would see in a textbook. This is far too irrelevant (at best, only vaguely so) for the particular topic you are focusing on, and demonstrates a superficial standard of understanding for your level (as 2^nd year students) and audience (professional, scientific community). To do this well, you should be sourcing your information from primary scientific literature and collectively presenting this body of current understanding about the evidence on, and mechanisms of, function relevant to your research question (hypothesis). 

Hypothesis

The hypothesis should be one or two short, simple sentences with clearly defined and specially detailed treatment(s) and/or condition(s) [independent variable(s)], measurable outcome(s) [dependent variable(s)] and the context of the study [i.e. your model organism, the cane toad (Bufo marinus) and other amphibia (such as frogs or other toad species), and tissue e.g. “ventricular (or atrial?)” contractile force].  

Your hypothesis should also mention only those outcomes you are able to measure (e.g. increase in heart rate, ventricular contractile force etc) not aspects that you are unable to measure directly (e.g. the activation of receptors). Leave the information about the underlying molecular mechanisms to the introduction and the discussion sections.

The hypothesis should also clearly align with the rationale presented in the Introduction, and match the rest of the report. For example, if you don’t end up presenting findings on one particular antagonist’s effects, then you shouldn’t hypothesise about it. Similarly, if you have hypothesised about something but don’t describe how it was tested or the outcomes of those tests, then you haven’t addressed your study’s focus.

Finally, remember this rule of thumb: you ‘aim to investigate’ something, but you ‘hypothesise that something will happen.’ So, an aim is often more generalised while the more specific the hypothesis, the more testable it becomes.

METHODS & DATA ANALYSIS

Your methods section should cover details pertaining to animal dissection, sample size, setup, experimental approach, and everything that is conventionally included under the umbrella term, data analysis. The experimental approach includes all details about baseline and experimental treatments, and any wash-off. The Data analysis portion of the Methods (expected ONLY for Report 2), includes everything about data extraction, any data transformation, validations, and the statistical tests that were applied to analyse your data.

The methods must be written in paragraph form and in past tense (as you have already completed the study). Writing should be concise and professional, avoiding inclusion of trivial details and reference to practical classes, prac manuals etc. See the experimental guides for some examples where you have been prompted to think about describing experimental details in reproducible terms. There should definitely not be any shopping lists and recipe style instructions. Treat this as a true scientific report.

RESULTS: 

The Results section should present the important outcomes of your investigation. This includes a concise description that summarises the key findings from your results and professional figures/tables of your analysed data.

Your description of findings should illustrate the key trends found, with appropriate and sufficient detail that your reader can follow and appreciate the significance of these results. Review the CLIPS website and Results sections of journal articles, for good models for how empirical and statistical information are incorporated into this description. Think about the ‘story’ your study’s outcomes tell, and how these can be highlighted through text and figures to emphasise the relative meaning of your results. Your findings may encompass both significant differences (from analyses) as well as results that show there were no significant differences between means/groups; something that does not differ/change may be just as important as reporting on something that does! 

Data presented should be of high quality (not raw data or the Prism table of stats on its own), presented according to proper conventions (axis labels, figure legends/table titles) and with appropriate detail to enable interpretation by your reader. Again, these conventions have been introduced via the CLIPS website, and re-enforced from your reading of the results section in journal articles. Talk to us if you’re unsure!

Outcomes of statistical analyses should be indicated in figures/tables AND included in description of findings according to conventions. The CLIPS site introduced some of these conventions and you should be able to spot them in the scientific papers you are reading (i.e. how and what detail is woven into the text description of findings and in figures/tables). 

A word on the terms ‘significant’ and ‘significance’: 

Any time you talk about results/data, the term ‘significant’ should be used to describe whether things are different e.g. x was significantly greater/different than y. This is exclusively a statistical term and should not be interchanged with its colloquial meaning.

It is also not meaningful nor appropriate if you state “x was significant, y was not significant” – all of your analyses will be comparative tests, looking for differences between means… so it is the differences that are significant or not significant. 

You should also avoid using ‘insignificant’ or ‘non-significant’… these make no sense in statistical terms… There was or there was no significant difference.

The term ‘significance’ on the other hand, applies to something being important, having value e.g. “the findings of this study have significance toward advancing our understanding of….” Make sure you don’t confuse this term, with the descriptions about statistical outcomes (e.g. significantly different).

Some common pitfalls to avoid!

• Not having a section(s) of text describing your findings! Describing your findings in the figure legends is neither appropriate for this particular task, nor a replacement to the body of text that always accompanies a results section (see journal articles, notice they always have pictures and text!).
• Presenting results in a manner that hinders interpretation of findings – definitely do not present raw data or the table of statistical analysis outcomes Prism generates. Your audience wants to know the crucial and interesting bits that your study found and will definitely not be able to make mental calculations to appreciate the significance of your outcomes if you present just the raw values, for example. Also, take care with labelling – your figures/tables should be informative in a stand-alone manner; misuse of words (e.g. ‘rate’ when your data are simply absolute values) or ambiguous terms hinders interpretation.
• Presenting results in a manner that creates disjoint, confusion or contradiction. A biggie here are duplicitous findings – when the same data is presented in two different ways (e.g. presenting both tables and graphs that show the same data, or that show raw and mean data, or absolute (means) and relative (% change) data, or any other way where you are showing essentially the same data twice). This is false reporting because you insinuate you have more findings than you actually do. Again, remember what the focus of your report is and be selective about which results you therefore need to present. Similarly, be selective about how you present results; not everything necessarily requires graphical presentation, only those things which are actually meaningful ‘findings’. Other relevant but not necessarily key results, should still be included but perhaps only in text format.

DISCUSSION:

In the Discussion you interpret your findings in context of the underlying physiological mechanisms and relevant scientific literature. Avoid simply restating your results. Now this is by far, the most difficult part of your report, and we know that. Definitely read the Discussion sections of journal articles to notice how this is structured, how evidence from other studies are weaved into the arguments presented, and how conclusions are drawn based on this collective evidence (own results and results of others). 

The most important points of a discussion:

• Your discussion must discuss your results in relation to findings from previous, relevant studies (how do your findings on application of particular drug(s) align with findings in scientific literature? say more than just “this supports/is similar/is consistent to the study by Smith et al 2011”… how?); 
• You must use the literature to explore (discuss) the underlying mechanisms that might explain your results. Go beyond just what you introduced in the Introduction. What have the studies you are comparing your results to been able to reveal about the specific underlying mechanisms, and therefore collectively what do your findings suggest about underlying mechanisms that may have led to your results?
• The claim and evidence (your argument) presented in each paragraph should be logical to follow (hardest bit). Give your report to someone to read; do they understand your claims and conclusions in each para, or are there elements of arguments missing in-between that helps them follow your logic?

When providing an explanation (claim), it is crucial you are showing justification for that explanation, and that is done by integrating the evidence from literature to back up your claim. Without this, your argument has no credibility. If all of this confuses you, or alternatively, even if you think you’ve got it, this is a good focus for some deeper conversations with your tutor during the classes!

A common pitfall for past students is demonstrating an adequate depth of understanding about the relevant physiology. As in the Introduction, you are being challenged to dig deeper than just what the prescribed textbooks describes; instead, your writing should reflect models of cellular physiology documented in the relevant body of scientific research. To successfully meet this standard, a good deal of time is needed for finding relevant papers and reading them (in full!), then weaving together the physiological understanding. Additionally, “underlying mechanisms” means more than just the gross overarching phenomenon (e.g. adrenaline binds to beta-adrenoceptors leading to increase in contractile force) – this course is titled Integrative Cell and Tissue Biology, so your writing should demonstrate the physiological processes at play at the cell and tissue level that explain the likely mechanisms of action leading to your experimental outcomes.

One final point… LIMITATIONS

A common issue in the Discussion section is an overly heavy focus on limitations that are actually errors or potential errors, and presenting these in an isolated paragraph right at the end of the report. 

Limitations are not the same as error (human, experimental), so make sure you clarify your understanding of these two ideas. Limitations in scientific writing refer to limitations to the conclusions our study can draw! If limitations are relevant, these should be things that impact on the conclusions you can draw from your findings, and this is how you should think about their inclusion when interpreting your findings. Please try to think beyond motherhood ideas such as sample size. Whilst this may be a relevant limitation for statistical purposes, small sample sizes are typically the standard in many research fields – is this the case for yours? You should consider the sample sizes used in the papers you read, before making such claims. But if you do think this is relevant and important, you need to try to extend your reasoning – how would a larger sample size actually alter the outcomes you got?

Then, presenting a large section in isolation that criticises every (often trivial) aspect of your investigation, leaves your reader with doubt about the veracity of your study and findings. Would putting the cursor 0.1mm away from the peak when measuring peak contractile force, really have a significant impact on the relative, analysed data you presented? Similarly, is sample size actually relevant if your findings are consistent with research? Perhaps, but why? Don’t ‘bash’ your study, acknowledge any limitations, explaining in context of other research, why those are limitations, but then move on. E.g. “Whilst mean peak force appears to be significantly different between [xxxx], this interpretation is drawn cautiously because…. [what have other studies done that may be a more rigorous method of determining differences? Are there limitations in what this particular measurement can tell us about underlying causative mechanisms?].

Point is, any limitation you do discuss should be in context of interpreting/evaluating a finding, and should be supported by evidence from the literature. Collectively, aim to demonstrate the impact on conclusions you can draw about your study’s findings, and not a bunch of issues that did/could have gone wrong… and possibly did not.

REFERENCES:  

As a general guide, it is expected that you use at least 6-10 primary references (i.e. original studies from journals) in your reports; you should definitely aim to read far more however, as this will provide you with the breadth and depth of understanding about the research area to write well! 

The majority of your references should be peer-reviewed articles from scientific research journals (which can be paper-based or on-line and are available through an appropriate database such as PubMed, Web of Science or Google Scholar). You may use review articles for the background information in the Introduction, but reviews should not be overly relied upon. Reviews will however, give you lots of ideas for other primary papers (look at the references list in a review!). Primary, original papers will be most effective to justify your arguments, especially in the Discussion section. These tasks absolutely expect that your ideas are formed almost entirely on these primary papers. Lectures, prac manual notes and websites are definitely inappropriate references and must be avoided. Textbooks must also be avoided; these are a good start if you want to get your head into the basic physiology, but will not help you when it comes to the juicier thinking and writing that is expected, and which we know you can demonstrate!

It will be critical that you are making good decisions about the papers you find and use, ensuring they are relevant and applicable to the model organism of your study. One very common pitfall is the presumption that mammalian (human) mechanisms are directly applicable to a non-mammalian animal model – is this the case based on your reading? If so, you would have to present a very robust argument from the outset, so that subsequent claims based on mammalian physiology are justified and clearly transferable. Even if this were the case however, a critical discussion would not rely solely on just mammalian research; ensure you are integrating research (i.e. it’s fine to use mammalian studies but in addition to, not instead of, research that used amphibious models) that enable you to verify your findings and discuss underlying mechanisms in your study organism(s). Primarily, your reports should be clearly linked to the body of research in amphibia.

Citations in-text and in the References List can be any style of your choosing, but must be consistent to one style throughout the report. Assistance on citation method and style is described in the UQ library website UQ library website, and you should definitely be familiar with established conventions by now (this will be necessary and expected throughout your studies now and beyond). Avoid leaving claims and lengthy sections of text unsupported – any discussion of current knowledge, processes, mechanisms etc, should be supported by literature consistently throughout the writing.

WRITING & STRUCTURE:  

Writing in the scientific style is an artform – like anything, it comes with practise. Advising you to “ensure you have good flow and clarity” is therefore going to sound abstract when you are first learning what this means. Whilst you might not quite get it this first time (i.e. from this course), reflect on how your writing changes by the end of the semester and one day down the track when you’re doing a similar task. Try to also look to the literature and recognise what this scientific style looks like and how you can edit your own writing from this.

For your reports, writing style must conform to language conventions of a scientific article (e.g. third person, passive voice). Your writing should flow well (  ), with clarity to ideas/arguments presented. Be careful of disjointed logic that will disrupt the meaning of your ideas and the points you are trying to make. Look for patterns and conventions, structure and order of content, in each section of the articles you read.

Writing concisely but in detail is a common confusion and hurdle for students, even at times, for your tutors/academics! For most, this comes with practise… and practise… and more practise. You will get the opportunity to practise this very thing, when you refine the content of Report 1, to fit within the final task. For Report 2, you will have just 1500 +/- 10% words for the whole conventional content required in a scientific report, and will be especially important you don’t lose depth to meet the word count.

As a general rule of thumb: “detail” means integrating the RIGHT information not necessarily more (waffly) information. When deciding what is right, consider if the information is relevant to effectively build/make your point. Expressing your ideas succinctly requires careful word choices and sentence structure. You will notice that the articles you read use short, simple and clear statements; thus avoid flowery descriptions and long convoluted sentences.

Make sure to check grammar and spelling – another simple source of marks you should avoid losing out on!

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